


No Prison Like Gravity

by MirrorManning



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Gen, Post-Movie Epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 06:32:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10484430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorManning/pseuds/MirrorManning
Summary: Caught in the gravity of Earth's moon, Rita realizes the Rangers may have found a far more effective prison for her than the depths of the ocean.Or:My take on Reboot!Rita landing on the moon, and what she might find there.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place immediately after the movie, and by the end lines up with the timeline of the first chapter of my previous fic.

[Cycle 868362857]

 

[Zeo energy readings stable]

 

[Evolutionary guidance systems partially online]

 

[Terraforming systems offline]

 

[Matter transfer systems partially online]

 

[Long range scanning systems operational]

 

         [Multiple aberrant biological species detected]

 

         [Unaccounted for sentient species detected; Core process override – interference forbidden]

 

[System diagnostic suspended]

 

…

…

…

 

[Cycle 868362858]

 

[Zeo energy readings stable]

 

\- - - - - - - - -

 

The cold blackness of space has a comfortable familiarity about it. The crushing weight of the deep sea is replaced by a howling vacuum, but the cold, and the dark, and the emptiness feels like coming home.

 

Rita is nothing if not patient, when she needs to be.

 

This tiny little speck of a planet orbited its inconsequential star sixty five million times while she slept in the depths of its oceans. Caught in its gravity, Rita knows its only a matter of time before she crashes back to Earth. With luck, these new Rangers will be dead by then and the Zeo Crystal left undefended.

 

Zordon cannot act without his proxies. Rita knows no such weakness. When she returns, she will not underestimate his resources again.

 

She _will_ have the Zeo Crystal. She needs it. She's seen what's coming, and it will _not_ find her defenseless, all other life be damned.

 

When Rita finds herself caught in the gravity of Earth's moon, the massive crater she leaves on its surface is but a small fraction of the violent destruction she wishes she could wreak. The ocean was no true prison, but trapped on this lifeless rock with nothing but her bent and beaten staff, and the now cracked and fading Power Coin, she knows Zordon may have finally found a cell that will hold her, entirely on accident.

 

\- - - - - - - - -

 

[Cycle 868362859]

 

[Zeo energy readings show large spike in crystal activity]

 

         [Sensor arrays re-purposed for expanding monitoring]

 

         [Power Coin activity detected]

 

         [Rangers active on planet surface]

 

         [Powering up dormant systems]

 

[Evolutionary guidance systems partially online]

  

         [Critical AI malfunction detected; reboot in-process]

 

[Terraforming systems offline]

 

[Matter transfer systems partially online]

 

[Long range scanning systems operational]

 

         [Multiple aberrant biological species detected]

 

         [Unaccounted for sentient species detected; Core process override – interference forbidden]

 

[System diagnostic complete; awaiting Ranger input]

 

\- - - - - - - - -

 

Rita spends the first three days of her new exile in a catatonic trance. No power she has available to her is capable of breaking this moon's gravitational hold on her and returning her to the planet below. Zordon and his Rangers have won.

 

On the fourth day she begins walking. No amount of patience will get her off this rock, but fading to nothing is not how Rita plans to end her existence. Sooner or later her visions will bear fruit and what she's seen will descend upon Earth's barely protected Zeo Crystal and consume life on this planet as it has on countless before.

 

When it comes, perhaps it will sense her presence here and she can either die with the life on the planet below, or perhaps leverage some unforeseen angle and escape the system entirely in its wake.

 

In the meantime, she'll be best served by getting to know her prison.

 

In truth, Rita's trek across the moon's surface is little more than an exercise in keeping her mind active. Most of her time at the bottom of Earth's ocean had been spent unconscious, her body clinging to life while the dormant Power Coin kept it alive. It was only the awakening of the other five that pulled her fractured mind back to the surface. Now she needs something to focus on to keep the pieces from breaking any further.

 

For weeks her work at mentally mapping out the moon's surface bears no obvious fruit, until one day it does.

 

Had she not been so thorough in her exploration, she might have missed the small bit of Eltarian tech entirely.

 

The cave it leads her to and the ship buried within are more than Rita could have dared to hope for.

 

It's been millennia since she last saw an Eltarian spaceship. She had no idea there had ever been more than one sent to this system. The dormant technology is ancient, but the flickering energy of Rita's cracked Power Coin is enough to send it flaring back to life.

 

It doesn't take her long to realize this ship will likely never fly again. Many of the exposed systems are horribly damaged, and while this ship is markedly different from the one that brought Rita and the rest of Zordon's Rangers to Earth, Rita knows enough to see that this one is beyond repair.

 

It isn't until she finds the ship's caretaker that she realizes exactly what kind of vessel she's found.

 

The caretaker AI seems to have made a lair for itself in one of the ship's secondary control rooms. As Rita approaches it comes scuttling out on four mechanical legs, inconsistently sized and each with a different number of joints. It has five more appendages that seem to function as arms, with different tools and devices mounted at each end.

 

It would hardly be recognizable if not for the central processing unit at its center and the uncomfortably lifelike face sitting atop it.

 

The Eltar had briefly toyed with the idea of terraforming and evolutionary engineering on recently formed worlds hosting Zeo Crystals. Only a few experimental ships had been sent out before the program had been shut down. Rita recognizes the face within this strange technological mishmash as the program creator's attempt at creating a lifelike sapient appearance to go with their caretaker AI. The development of the caretaker units had been scrapped along with the rest of the project. The Alpha units made users far less uncomfortable.

 

This particular unit seems to have modified itself dramatically.

 

The machine comes to a stop a short distance away from where Rita stands.

 

It speaks to her in Eltarian, “Welcome aboard, Green Ranger. Finster Unit 01 awaiting input commands. Terraforming systems are currently offline, but evolutionary guidance protocols and matter transfer arrays are both partially operational.”

 

Now _that_ sounds promising.

 

“Tell me more about this ship's matter transfer capabilities.”

 

\- - - - - - - - -

 

As it turns out, the damaged matter transfer arrays are no longer capable of safely teleporting organic matter. It's a bitter set back that will keep Rita trapped here on this moon for longer than the ship's discovery had allowed her to hope, but at least she has the preliminary tools for exacting vengeance on Zordon and his new Rangers.

 

The Finster unit's appropriated control room is full of an absurd assortment of what appear to be figurines. Small constructions of stone mixed with bits of technology that all seem to bear passing resemblance to various forms of life created by the unguided evolution on the planet below.

 

The Finster unit appears to bear no love for the evolution of life on Earth it was unable to have a hand in, it's crafted figurines a testament to how it believes it might have done better.

 

Crash landing on the moon kept it from completing its appointed task, and it seems to have gone a bit mad in the millennia since. It rambles on in frequently broken sentences about the abhorrent evolutionary mistakes living on Earth, veering close to expressing a desire for wide scale eradication, before a block on its core processes kicks in.

 

It seems evolution of sentient life on Earth has disabled any ability on Finster's part to interfere.

 

Rita is not going to let a few lines of code stand in her way.

 

“Tell me, what would it take for a Ranger to assume full control of all processes aboard this ship?”

 

The Finster unit processes the question for a moment before responding, “A full system reboot performed by a user with an active Power Coin should grant full command access to the operating Ranger.”

 

Rita smiles, “Excellent. Once I've done that, you can tell me more about your evolutionary guidance systems and how they might be used to remove this planet's Zeo Crystal.”

 

\- - - - - - - - -

 

The evolutionary guidance systems Finster spoke of have in fact been technologically cannibalized over the centuries in the creation of its strange crafted menagerie. Once exposed to the energy of an active Zeo Crystal, Finster's creations have been designed to utilize that life energy to complete their own evolutionary development, emerging as fully formed, fully autonomous, techno-organic constructs. Constructs that can then receive command instructions from the ship.

 

It's not a way off of Earth's moon, not yet anyway, but it's enough to get started.

 

The ship's damaged morphing grid is another unexpected windfall. It gives Rita a way to monitor the ship's long range scans of the planet, and Angel Grove in particular. With luck it might also allow Rita to reach out with her own power and animate her Putty minions on Earth's surface.

 

Rita stands over Finster's creations in quiet contemplation before selecting one and holding it up for inspection.

 

The caretaker looks on eagerly, “That is one of my personal favorites. I've been terribly disappointed in the evolutionary path of what this planet's sapients have termed 'Arachnids.'”

 

Rita takes the figurine with her as she steps over to watch the image currently displayed by the ship's morphing grid. In it, two small human figures stand on a rocky outcropping not far from the mine Rita had used in the creation of Goldar several weeks earlier.

 

Rita grips her damaged Power Coin tightly and reaches out mentally through the morphing grid.

 

She looks down at the object in her other hand, “Now tell me, Finster, _what can it do?_ ”

 

Zordon cannot act without his proxies.

 

It appears the universe is not without a sense of irony.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So that's how we get Finster and monsters-of-the-week :)
> 
> Hope this wasn't too exposition heavy and info-dumpy, and that it still appeals to people who weren't giant fans of the originals like I was. Tell me what you think!
> 
> I'll be back with a new chapter of my Trini/Kim fic soon.


End file.
